My alarm wakes me at 5am and I’m feeling ok despite putting in a 24-hour shift. Having arrived too late to find anywhere to have dinner last night, I’m now leaving too early to have the hotel breakfast, but I’m in no doubt that I’ll be able to find something along the way. Right now I’m keen on getting some miles in. Stepping outside the hotel, I unfold my bike, but something isn’t right. I wheel it to a nearby bench to inspect it and I see the problem - there’s a massive crack in the rear part of the frame, the ‘seat stay’ part of the titanium rear triangle has sheared all the way through.
My immediate reaction is shock. I inspect it again and again in sad disbelief, but nothing changes; it’s still broken. I remember hearing a noise whilst cycling into town yesterday, which at the time I’d dismissed, but realise now that it must have been when the frame broke. This doesn’t look good. In fact, it looks very bad. It looks like a show stopper.
I sit down on the bench. I’m pretty unhappy. I think about the effort I’ve put in to get here, and the people rooting for me. Health and energy-wise, I’m on form, and enjoying the race. This doesn’t seem fair.
‘Think, you idiot’, ‘How am I going to get out of this one?’.
This is my fifth ultra endurance race. I’ve learned that one of the key things to make it to the end, which sounds simple, but can be really difficult to achieve (and sometimes out of your control), is very simply ‘don’t give up’.